-- 11 Quarantined in Texas Over SARS Fears
-- WHO Declares SARS Contained
-- CDC Lifts Travel Alert for Toronto, Beijing
Editor's Note: The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention has setup a special Web site
at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/index.htm
Compiled from Various News Sources
Eleven people, including military personnel and their
relatives, were quarantined in Texas July 12 after some reported
respiratory problems similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),
officials said.
Officials said initial test results from eight of the 11 quarantined
were negative for SARS. Two of the eight tested positive for
streptococcus pneumonia.
A group of military personnel passed through the
Toronto airport recently, and some reported mild to moderate
respiratory problems after returning home.
Officials with the Abilene-Taylor County Public
Health District said that there is no reason for alarm. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it would monitor the
situation in Texas.
WHO: SARS Contained
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared July 5
that SARS had been contained around the world, with no new cases
reported to the agency by any country since June 15. But it warned
that the disease could still pose a threat.
WHO removed the last place on its list of SARS-affected areas,
Taiwan. No new cases have been found there for 20 days, a span the
agency believes to be twice the disease's incubation period.
SARS has infected 8,439 people in 30 countries on five continents
and has killed 812 people. Nearly 200 people with SARS are still
being treated in hospitals around the world under strict isolation
procedures to prevent them
from infecting health-care workers.
Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO director, said close cooperation
among health professionals around the world had contained the
disease, but cautioned against overconfidence.
Doctors still do not have a vaccine or a reliable cure for SARS. The
disease has been controlled mainly by isolating patients quickly and
quarantining anyone who has had close contact with them.
American officials have warned that SARS, believed by doctors to be
caused by a coronavirus, may prove to be a seasonal disease that
returns in the winter. Corona viruses are thought to cause a third
of all cases of the
common cold, an ailment with a strong seasonal pattern.
But Dr. David L. Heymann, WHO executive director of communicable
diseases, said that it was too soon to say whether SARS would prove
seasonal."
Authorities in China's Guangdong Province covered up the disease
after it first appeared last fall, and health officials in Beijing
initially covered up the disease when it spread rapidly there this
year.
SARS appears to have jumped from animals to people in November in
Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong. But while masked palm civets,
a Guangdong delicacy, have been found carrying nearly identical
viruses, it is not known
if a civet caused the first infection in people. Nor does anyone
know if thevirus first arose in civets or whether the civets caught
it from other animals in the wildlife menageries found in Guangdong
markets.
The disease spread in Hong Kong in late February, where it quickly
infected hundreds in hospitals and in crowded apartment buildings.
For reasons still not fully understood, the disease seemed to spread
fastest in hospitals
using very modern equipment. Hong Kong was also the site of the only
case in which more than 300 people in an apartment complex caught
the disease through apparently airborne transmission, in contrast
with the close
personal contact needed elsewhere.
CDC Lifts Alert for Toronto, Beijing
U.S. officials have lifted a SARS-related travel alert for Toronto.
The CDC said more than 30 days had elapsed since the last SARS case
in the Canadian city developed symptoms. The travel alert ended July
8.
U.S. officials also lifted the travel alert for Beijing, leaving
Taiwan the only area remaining on the list. The CDC said July 11
that the Beijing alert was lifted because more than 30 days had
elapsed since the last SARS case there developed symptoms. Hong Kong
was dropped from the list July 10.
A CDC travel alert is not a recommendation against travel to an
area, but it advises travelers of a health concern.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are the last areas under the CDC's travel alert
as of July 13.
